"Countrymen!" the voice exclaimed now. "And so I think, in truth, we must be. Yet, countryman, are you mad? Have you escaped out of some Dutch Bedlam to be roaming about here alone?" "No more mad than you who cry out to one who may be a Frenchman to halt. Come out of that hedge and let me see you. What regiment are you of?" "What regiment? The Tangier Horse--the Royal Dragoons, as we are now called.[3] What matters the name so long as the fruit is good!" the speaker said, as now he came out of a little wicket gate in the hedge and advanced toward where Bevill sat his horse. As he did so, however, he still held his musquetoon in such a manner that he could have fired its charge into the other's body at any instant. "What are you doing here?" the latter asked, while recognising by the man's accoutrements and banderole that he was undoubtedly that which he stated himself to be. "Is," he continued, "your regiment near here? Or any portion of our army? If not, you must be mad to betray yourself to one who might belong to the present controllers of all this neighbourhood." "That," the trooper replied respectfully, since he saw that he had a gentleman to deal with, and one who, though he wore no signs of being an officer, might very well be one, "you had best ask my captain and the lieutenant. They are breaking their fast in the inn." "Your captain and lieutenant? Great heavens! Almost might I ask if they too, if all of you, are demented. Here, in this place, surrounded on all sides, garrisoned everywhere, by the enemy!" "They are as like, sir, to go harmless as you. And we have a picket near. The enemy cannot get near us without our being warned in time to escape. We are spying out the land." "Lead me to the officers," Bevill said. Upon which the trooper motioned to him to dismount and leave his horse and follow him through the little orchard, out of which he had descended to the road. "They are," he said, "at the back of the house." While, as he did so, he repeated himself and said, "We are spying out the land, but wish no one to spy on us." A burst of low, suppressed laughter reached Bevill's ears as now, after tying La Rose's reins to a stake in the quickset hedge, he drew near to the spot where the man had said the officers were. A burst of laughter, suddenly hushed by one who formed the group, as he said, "Silence! Silence! Here comes some stranger. If 'tis a Frenchman by chance----" [Illustration: "'He is no Frenchman,' Bevill answered for himself."] "He will not be a Frenchman or any other man long, unless he is of us." "He is no Frenchman," Bevill answered for himself as he reached the grass plot, on which several officers sat round a table, and while taking off his hat in salutation as he did so; "but, instead, an Englishman. One who was once an officer of cavalry like yourselves, and hopes to be one again ere long."